Improved Soul Fire is Frustrating

[Rayzan]

Getting rid of the ICD would be nice. Or atleast shorten it so casting a SF that hits the target .2 sec before the CD is up is registered and not wasted. Personally, I don't think it belongs in Aff at all. It just doesn't fit the play style. Maybe reduce the dmg (talented for my dmg in demo) and reduce the cast time to close to incinerate. Remove ICD and the. Just cast it as if you would an incinerate every 15 sec. I wouldn't mind that.

[Spoiledkid]

Would be nice if the haste buff lasts 15 secs and has 10 sec cooldown (or 20s and 15s ICD). So you could refresh it when there's 0-5 sec remaining.

[Rayzan]

Yes, the ICD is the most frustrating part. Mostly for aff tho. Havin the duration AND ICD on the same timer just seems dumb for a spell that need as close to 100% uptime as possible. With aff that means dots will drop a lot or your ISF uptime will diminish. Unless you get really lucky the whole time there will be many times where ISF is about to fall off around the same time another dot is and you must sit and cast that long spell at ONE point. Not too early and not too late. There's no flexibility. Lowering, or removing, the ICD would fix this and I think many people would be much happier

[Wingedtoast]

I truly don't get the outrage with ISF.. For affliction, obviously. Even possibly demo. But destro, it feels fine to me.. Sure, it was really awkward and clunky at the start and it still pisses me off sometimes when it drops or I get a proc at 4 seconds remaining.. And must choose to hang on to the proc, or throw it out now & hard cast 2 seconds later so it lands just as the buff wears off. But really, after a while, and having got used to it a bit in raids, it feels okay to me. It's less of a ball breaker and more just one more thing I need to remember to do, it's alright now. What annoys me most about it is how important it is to the application of your dots, and how I know any applied without it are just not as good :\

Looking forward to the change all the same, but I don't see it as the problem people seem to think. The ideal fix for me would be put it higher in the destro tree, so the other two specs don't get the 15% haste, and give them compensation in some way to maintain the specs position on dps. It seems more like the bandwagon problem that all the failures have jumped on...

[Rayzan]

Well most of the complaints for ISF come from Aff locks, which IMO is justified (for the most part). ISF is clunky and weird, ESP with the ICD and duration on the same timer. I can see why it would annoy destro but you're right in a sense that it would feel more "at home" with this spec and it's probably the easiest spec to fit it in the rotation and get used to it.

[Deleted]

i like the proc, but the upkeep is kind of annoying. that said once the Shadow and Flame change is implemented i imagine ill be happy with the overall level of complexity in destro.

the bigger issue is that its so good affli has to use it, which is clearly bogus, if i was affli PVE id reroll til it was fixed. i imagine it would feel totally clumsy, but some people seem not to mind, hey ho.

alas blizz though hittingt affliction pvp with the nerfbat was more important than implementing whatever change they have in mind ^ ^ im looking forward to see what the hell it is they have planned for it.

[Nation]

I have no issue with the mechanic as a whole, however the fact that it has a cooldown frustrates me. Having to line up Imp Procs with the final seconds and sometimes losing it entirely drives me crazy. They should just remove the cooldown so we can refresh the buff without the risk of hard casting SF.

[scandore8472]

The problem with Destruction right now is that the rotation is too complicated in comparison to, say, Affliction's, which is actually quite straight forward. Considering you have to watch for the debuff durations on Corruption, Bane of Doom, Immolate and Shadow and Flame while keeping Chaos Bolt and Conflagrate on CD and Improved Soulfire up at all times, it gets stressing to manage all of that.

Fortunately, Shadow and Flame will soon be proccing from Incinerate aswell, which makes it less of a hassle. I still say Improved Soulfire needs revising. Maybe buff the haste up a little and make it a part of Empowered Imp procs?

Go play demo and get back to me on 'how complicated' destro is...

Two things have changed with destro's rotation. Corruption is back in our rotation, and we need to make sure ISF is up. That's it.

Blizzard gives us a free 15% haste buff and you guys are bitching about it because it makes our rotation too hard O.o? The only issue I have with ISF is reapplying, but once you get the hang of it, it's not really that difficult.

For those that are having a hard time keeping track of it, download power auras.

[Lachdanan]

Blizzard gives us a free 15% haste buff and you guys are bitching about it because it makes our rotation too hard O.o? The only issue I have with ISF is reapplying, but once you get the hang of it, it's not really that difficult.

For those that are having a hard time keeping track of it, download power auras.

It's not free, our damage in every spec is balanced around the buff and we pretty much do 15% less damage without it. It's the new ruin. I don't think many here has said anything about it being hard but annoying.

And like you said the only issue you have is... others may have other issues you know? They surely aren't posting your issues.

[Deleted]

As an affliction warlock it feels weird that what looks to me as token destro talents are mandatory to keep my affliction damage up to par.
This talent is now mandatory for all 3 specs. That can't be right. There's no choice, u have to take it or u gimp yourself.
If its this important then just give the class a 15% haste buff and do something nice with the points so we can again choose what to do with our excess points.
But lets wait what blizz will come up with

[Zoots]

To me this talent just feels weird and clunky. I don't feel awesome powerful using it. I know I have to keep uptime on it or else my dps will suffer. Imp procs only feel like the occasional bonus I can use but I don't feel any more powerful with it. I realized just how much I dislike this talent when suddenly heroism goes off and I realize it's totally thrown off my rhythm. That, and the fact it's more or less needed with every warlock spec is seriously starting to annoy me as well. It's just not a fun mechanic to me. I know others will disagree, but I just don't like it.

[Rayzan]

As Aff this is your normal fight. All dots up. 2sec left on haunt. No SS left. Now you can cast haunt letting ISF fall off and then spend almost 3 sec casting SF to reapply or cast SF and let haunt drop off.

Now imagine you have 2 sec left on haunt and 5 on UA. You can't refresh everything in time! Should you FF to give UA a little more time, wasting a GCD and having to cast UA again in ~10 sec? Haunt and then SF again? This whole sequence from FF, haunt, SF, UA would take about 8-10 sec.

And oh look! ISF is about the fall off again already and haunt is coming off CD again too!

Seriously, this happens a lot every fight. It might not seem too bad on paper but it really cuts into a lot of the aff rotation. Basically, since Aff has so many "must get as close to 100% up time as possible" spells, something must falter. Whether that's less ISF uptime, letting dots fall off more often, or less haunt uptime, it's like trading out one for the other. IMO, this is just clunky and ridiculous.

[Belloc]

The problem with Destruction right now is that the rotation is too complicated in comparison to, say, Affliction's, which is actually quite straight forward. Considering you have to watch for the debuff durations on Corruption, Bane of Doom, Immolate and Shadow and Flame while keeping Chaos Bolt and Conflagrate on CD and Improved Soulfire up at all times, it gets stressing to manage all of that.

Fortunately, Shadow and Flame will soon be proccing from Incinerate aswell, which makes it less of a hassle. I still say Improved Soulfire needs revising. Maybe buff the haste up a little and make it a part of Empowered Imp procs?

Affliction's "rotation" is much more complicated than Destruction's... don't fool yourself.

[sonix]

As said earlier, the biggest problem is that it was factored into warlock.. Meaning if you gave a untouched mage ISF and he kept it up 100% of the time, he would light recount up with very pretties. I think the problem is its just another thing we have to maintain and only the good locks will keep it up 99% of the time.. and the reward just isn't there.. you do "Your expected class dps"... which can still be lower than a mage. Personally I don't mind ISF, I just wish there was more reward for juggling the Destro rotation. For the guy who said it hasn't changed much since WOTLK.. It really has.. although corruption/ISF are the only main differences (unless you were a COE lock).. it does make destruction very busy.

[gherkin]

I hate ISF. All I do is cast things to make bars/auras appear. I do one or two shadow bolts every 10 seconds, which is really hard to get used to after a year of fitting 4-6 shadow bolts in every dot refresh. Blizzard is all "Casters have time to think while they cast" - No. I don't have time to think while trying to maintain 4 timers (Haunt, BoA, UA, ISF) and my mana with 50%+ Haste (Gear + DI + Aura + ISF + Eradication). On top of this, I have to make sure i'm using demon soul on cooldown, timed with trinket procs, and constantly find ways to make soul swap work.

This is probably just bitching. I'm going Destruction again because it's simpler.

Speaking of which, has anyone mathed out when and how often it is a dps increase to waste the two gcd's soul swapping to a second target (assuming the second target will live throuhg the entire soul swap)

[Rayzan]

Never mathed it out but with BoA and Corr being instant the only real difference is not casting UA which is fairly quick and the very small instant dmg soul swap does to it's target when inhaling/exhaling. I think it's more of a "let's make things a little simpler for aff locks" rather than a dps boost. But that's my opinion.

[andromalia]

I hate ISF. All I do is cast things to make bars/auras appear. I do one or two shadow bolts every 10 seconds, which is really hard to get used to after a year of fitting 4-6 shadow bolts in every dot refresh. Blizzard is all "Casters have time to think while they cast" - No. I don't have time to think while trying to maintain 4 timers (Haunt, BoA, UA, ISF) and my mana with 50%+ Haste (Gear + DI + Aura + ISF + Eradication). On top of this, I have to make sure i'm using demon soul on cooldown, timed with trinket procs, and constantly find ways to make soul swap work.

This is probably just bitching. I'm going Destruction again because it's simpler.

Speaking of which, has anyone mathed out when and how often it is a dps increase to waste the two gcd's soul swapping to a second target (assuming the second target will live throuhg the entire soul swap)

Depending on how quick you can switch targets, I'd imagine soul swap has a higher dpct than a shadow bolt filler (fully loaded with dots). How much higher depends on how quick you are. A focus target macro would probably do the job nicely.

[gherkin]

Yeah, my dps goes up a fair bit when I do a fully loaded swap with ISF up, and that's with clicking unit frames. I'll see what I can come up with for swapping to a 0/3 SE target.

[Jessicka]

I truly don't get the outrage with ISF..

Well let me explain:

- It's too valuable. For the two talent points it costs, and where it is in the tree it should be no more powerful than other talents on that level - Doom and Gloom, Emberstorm, Improved Immolate for example.

- It's poorly designed and implemented. It was originally meant to be an 'inverse' execute, and only operate at >80% of the target's health. For whatever reason, that proved not terribly useful - I'm guessing it not stacking with Heroism was the big downer, since Heroism is so frequently used at the pull that it basically rendered the talent effectively useless. They realised it wasn't working very late, didn't have anything in mind, nor the time to test it even if they had a replacement, so they just removed the limitation, realised it was now massively overpowered and had to nerf everything we have to compensate.

- It's mechanically awkward. Any kind of haste proc, be it from a trinket, enchant, eradication, can mean that 'perfect' timing on the start of a cast means it ends up hitting the target too soon and leaving you with a full, unbuffed hard cast to fix it.

- It makes us scale badly with gear. It effectively haste caps us at the end of this tier of content; which means by the end of the next tier we'll be massively underpowered since we stop scaling with gear as well as other classes.

- It's frustrating. Knowing how important it is makes it stressful when it drops. Do you really care when any of your DoTs drop or miss? No, you recast and get on with it. This leaves you scrabbling for Soul Burn or leaves you stood in a stupid place for three seconds while you desperately try to rectify it.

- It gives us a massive ramp up. Running through Heroics, you have to Soul Burn on every single pull to get ISF up to do something resembling competative damage. It's annoying, and when Soul Burn is on cooldown, or you're out of shards you damage is absolutely terrible and it makes you look bad. Maintaining it on trash packs is also a pain in the ass once Soul Burn is on cooldown too, as stuff tends to die in the eternity it takes to cast the spell.

For these reasons I'd be happy to see something in the next PTR notes along the lines of 'We buffed every damaging Warlock ability by 12-13% and replaced Improved Soul Fire with a placeholder called 'Black Hole' which does absolutely nothing while we try to think of something worth putting there.'

[Deleted]

^ cant disagree with anything here on jess' post. its strange when half the problem with a talent is that its 'too good' but thats exactly whats happened.

as for the soul swap discussion the math doesnt matter too much to me personally cause it would own in pvp eve if it did zero damage. anything to avoid standing still ^ ^